Jeth Arunseangroj

I started disposing face masks correctly to lessen the environmental impact. My friend sent me an article, “How To Dispose Face Masks in an Eco-Friendly Way,” which lists steps on how to properly dispose face masks. According to the article, the ear loops should be cut to decrease the chance of the masks entangling wildlife in case they end up in the ocean.

The article : https://www.dumblittleman.com/how-to-dispose-face-masks-properly/?fbclid=IwAR0YXU2h2_z4jMDjA_-CPIgxa_Ry6aDJ9ryLjUW0jZawYEhdsOr3MzHDmwI

I removed 5 pounds of trash from the ocean today. While I was procrastinating and watching YouTube videos, I stumbled across an advertisement about a campaign, #TeamSeas, by MrBeast, a famous American youtuber.

The campaign partners with 2 non-profit environmental organizations, Ocean Conservancy, The Ocean Cleanup and aims to remove as many pounds of trash from the beaches, rivers, and oceans as the amount of dollars people donate to the campaign. While Ocean Conservancy recruited crew to pick up trash from the beaches and remove floating abandoned fishing gear from the seas, the Ocean Cleanup supplies a giant trash-eating robot to pick up garbage from the rivers.

According to Ocean Conservancy, each year 11 million metric tons of plastics go in to the oceans. The plastic productions and climate crisis are strongly linked, and they both greatly affect the oceans including coral bleaching, marine animal extinction from ocean acidity and ocean heat. Plastic producers are responsible for producing 2 gigatons of greenhouse gases, which equal to he emissions of 370 million passenger cars. #TeamSeas has removed 30 million pounds of trash so far.

I think it is very inspiring to see a famous person uses his immense influence and platform to contribute to a greater cause. Seeing how well-received the campaign is, and considering most of MrBeast’s audience are teenagers, I am hopeful that the next generations will be more considerate of the environments and our planet.

I started carrying a reusable straw with me wherever I go. My girlfriend gave me a reusable stainless steel straw as one of Valentine’s day gifts. I have been using a stainless steel tumbler without a straw for a while. I am grateful to her because I don’t have to spill water every time I drink from my cup and now I can claim to be a more eco-friendly person. As a frequent drinker (boba drinker), I thought using a reusable straw could really make some good impacts in terms of reducing the carbon footprint. However, upon researching information online, I learned that it would take me at least 3 years of drinking one cup of boba with the reusable straw every week to compensate for the carbon footprint that a stainless steel straw produces. Starting from the production, transportation, to disposal, a stainless steel straw leaves 200 times more carbon footprint than a plastic straw does. Nonetheless, I am still thankful and will try not to lose the straw and keep using it for as long as possible.

Reference : https://www.appropedia.org/HSU_straw_analysis

I planted 5 trees yesterday. I came across another of MrBeast campaign, #TeamTrees, which was launched in 2019 with the goal to plant as many tree as the amount dollars donated to the campaign. The campaign has planted over 20 million trees in 27 countries across the globe such as USA, Canada, China, and my home country, Thailand!

I think planting trees is the most direct way to deal with the greenhouse gas as trees are the only thing that is actively reducing the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. According to U.S. Department of Agriculture, a mature tree absorbs around 48 pounds of carbon dioxide and produces 260 pounds of oxygen in one year. An average person in the U.S. produces 15.5 tons of carbon dioxide each year. That means, for each new person born, there must be around 300 trees planted just to maintain the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Given that the population increase rate is roughly 1% each year. This means everyone in the world has to plant at least 3 trees every year. This concerns me as I do not know anyone who plants 3 trees every year. And, this is only to maintain the amount of carbon dioxide. If we want to reduce it, we need to plant more than 3. I am glad I have found #TeamTrees and plan to regularly contribute to this campaign.

Website : https://teamtrees.org

Update: My roommate canceled her plan to buy a car because she would be transferred to New York City instead. Now she looks forward to taking the subway to work everyday.

I tried being a vegan for 3 days. My first Drawdown challenge inspired me to practice a more eco-friendly diet. For three days, my meals consist of

Breakfast : 

- 2 Bananas

- 1 Piece of Natural Valley Crunchy granola bar

- 1 Glass of almond milk

Lunch

- 1 Bowl of spring vegetable mix with roasted sesame seeds dressing or roasted onion dressing

- 1 Bowl of rice and raw tofu with seaweed flakes

- 1 Bowl of miso soup with tofu and seaweed

Dinner

- 1 Bowl of rice and avocado with soy sauce and wasabi

- 1 Bowl of baby spinach and tomato with roasted onion dressing

- 1 Bowl of miso soup with tofu and seaweed

I never realized the impact of salad dressing until now. I used the dressings that my mom recommended and they make my salad taste ten times better. Never have I thought that I would be sitting in class thinking about going home to eat salad until now.

I was assigned a reading from a different class about the climate impact of consuming meat and dairy. I have been using that article as a reference for information about climate impact of meat and dairy products since then. From the article, I learned that 14.5% greenhouse gas emissions are from meat and dairy industries. I also bears in mind the fact that for the same amount of protein, meat leaves around 100 times more carbon footprint than an eggs does.

After completing this challenge and realizing how much salad is underrated, I intend to reduce the amount of meat in my diet and add more vegetable from now on.

The article : https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/what-is-the-climate-impact-of-eating-meat-and-dairy/

As the president of the club, I convinced the Judo team to walk 2.8 mile to practice instead of taking an Uber. Every Wednesday UCLA Judo team is invited to practice at Sawtelle Judo Dojo, which is 2.8 mile away from UCLA campus. We usually share an Uber there, but this time we have some extra time, so I convinced everyone to walk.

It was a very good warmup as we were walking at a fast pace. Google Maps said that it would take almost an hour to get there, but we got there in 25 minutes. As we all are international students, we agree that it was a great way to familiarize ourselves with the neighborhood. We also discovered UCLA Thrift Shop near Santa Monica boulevard on the way there. We planed to walk back from practice but we were too tired to do so. We took a bus back.

This might not count but I just wanted to put it here. I was able to convince my roommate to buy an electric car instead of a gasoline car.

My roommate is graduating this quarter and is considering buying a car after graduation. She will be working in Clairemont and there’re not many options for public transportations in that area. She was debating between a Honda CR-V and a Honda HR-V. She came to me for my opinion since my father works at Honda and my family are avid Honda users. The conversation turned into a debate of whether electric cars or gas cars are better.

We talked about how although the price of electric cars are $20,000 more expensive than gasoline cars, the cost per mile of an electric car is around $0.04 while a fuel car is $0.10. This means that if my roommate drives about 20 miles per day, since she would be living 7 miles away from her company, she would drive about 7,000 miles per year. That means she would save $4,000 on the gas price each year. It would take her only 5 years to compensate for the price difference of the electric car.

Upon looking up the information, we were surprised by how much carbon dioxide a fuel car produces. According to United States Environmental Protection Agency, a typical fuel car produces 4,600 kilogram of carbon dioxide each year. It would take 209 years for a tree to absorb that amount of carbon dioxide.

She agreed that electric cars are better option for her in a long run, as she plans to stay in LA for more than 5 years. She went to a Tesla showroom near our apartment the following day.

Last week I started eating mindfully without any distractions, such as watching Youtube videos or listening to musics, for 4 days. I have always wanted to do this challenge since I came across a YouTube video about “Dopamine Detoxing” which claims that avoiding unnecessary stimuli like watching videos or listening to musics while doing daily tasks will lead to higher motivation in life. I did not realize that this could have an environmental impact like reducing food waste until I saw this on this Drawdown challenge here. Because I always finish all of my food, I don’t think this challenge would help much in terms of the environment, so I decided to go all out by being mindful throughout the whole process of eating from getting groceries to cooking to eating to washing the dishes. It certainly helped me gain insights about myself and motivate me to do other challenges.

This challenge saves me so much time. I spent significantly less time with the whole eating process. I usually have my headphones on when buying groceries, cooking, or washing the dishes. By not listening to musics, I think more about what I am buying, so I ended up not purchasing one of those discounted Angus stew meat packages that I always get at Ralph. I also cook and wash the dishes faster because I was more focus on the tasks. When I eat I usually watch one or two or sometimes five episodes of Modern Family, so it usually takes at least 30 minutes for me to eat. Without watching anything, I finish eating in 5 minutes.

Another thing I noticed is that I appreciated my food more. Each bite was tastier than ever. I never realize how refreshing eating cucumbers are until now. It makes more want to try being a vegan for a week since I also saw that it is listed as one of the challenges on the Drawdown website.

I wanted to keep doing this challenge for a week but I failed on Thursday because I was very tired, coming back from Judo practice. I ended up watching YouTube videos while eating for comfort. I was able to do it again on Friday. I did not continue doing it on the weekend because I was out with my friends. Overall, it was a very worthwhile experience.

Hello world! Trying to post my first post here